On Love

 

Tackling a ticklish question in my sermon on Sunday.  If our varying spiritual paths have anything in common it is how we are all in this together and need to reach out with compassion to each other…in other words, or in another word: love.

 

They been teaching it for thousands of years.  Yet we are still blowing each other up, still hating each other.  There are still millions of homeless, and hungry.  Millions who go without or with at best substandard medical care.  We look at the world around us and it’s a reasonable question to ask: What’s love got to do with it?  A loaded sermon topic if there was one!

 

In the U.S., with the economy in deep trouble, and the presidential campaign reaching its final month … the claws have come out.  The fear of “other,” in this case an African American, is showing itself in the polls.  I listen to the bitterness and malice in the “discussion” and I myself wonder, what has love got to do with it?

 

It’s just one sermon.  About twenty minutes.  What to include?  What can I say?  We all talk about love.  Talk.  That’s a part of if.  The truth of it is that love is hard work!  If it weren’t, we’d all be living happy, love-filled lives. 

 

Need to look up G.K. Chesterton.  He said something like, “It isn’t that Christianity was tried and failed, it’s that Christianity was found difficult and left untried.”  It’s not just Christianity, of course, it’s all of us, all our spiritual paths. 

 

“All you need is love,” the Beatles told us.  But I wonder if that’s not like telling a starving person, “All you need is food.”  Swell.  So where IS the food? 

 

I am fond of the concept of a spiritual practice.  Regardless of our spiritual path, I think it is not the path we walk, it’s how we walk our path that counts.  Someone needs to admit that love isn’t the easiest thing in the world.  It takes work.  It takes “practice.” 

 

Love, I think, must be seen not as an end, but as a journey.  Yet there’s more to it than that.  I look are how we are encouraged to be narcissists.  “You deserve …” whatever it is that Madison Avenue is pitching.  Good grief!  We spend more, a lot more, on cosmetics (both for men and women) than we do feeding the hungry!

 

But I’m no longer so sure that narcissism is the same as loving oneself (and in this case loving oneself to the exclusion of others).  I wonder if in some way narcissism isn’t a symptom of self-loathing, or at least an absence of self love?

 

I begin to ponder that truly loving ourselves must be the beginning.  It cannot be the end, but it is the beginning.  We must truly love ourselves before we can love others.  And we’re back to one of my personal heroes: Rabbi Hillel.

 

If I am not for myself who will be for me?  (self love)

Yet if I am only for myself, what am I?  (love of others)

And if not now, when?  (action, not platitudes are what count)

 

Ok.  Now, a coherent sermon.  I hope!

On Fear And The Quest for Meaning

 

It’s taken a while (see the first two blogs on fear below).  It feels a bit like peeling an onion.  Layer upon layer.  Ok, we try not to acknowledge our fears, especially to ourselves.  And ok again, sacred fear seems to have held us in its grip not just for centuries but millennia.  But what is this fear that humans have that other living creatures appear to avoid?

 

It’s not fear of pain.  I remember, as a child, watching our dog begin to shake with fear once he knew we were headed for the vet.  All animals know fear of pain.  But there are at least two fears other animals appear to avoid, that we humans can’t.  One is obvious: the fear of death – not of injury, but of extinction.  The other is perhaps more subtle: the fear of meaninglessness.  I know many think our fear of death is paramount, but I believe the deeper fear is that of a life without meaning.

 

I think death is perhaps a bit less feared because there is no doubting its inevitability.  It will happen.  We will all die. 

 

But there is nothing inevitable about our meaning.  It just hangs there.  In a way, I think the fear of death and the fear of a lack of meaning are connected.  We are all time limited.  Not only is the question of meaning always in doubt, but we realize we only have a finite amount of time to “do” whatever it is we believe or hope will bring meaning to our lives.  It is humbling.  And it is frightening.

 

Some over-react to this fear by giving up on meaning.  “Eat, drink and be merry.”  Perhaps even take drugs.  But most such people, if they live past their thirties, tend to find that kind of life empty.  I think the so-called “mid-life crisis” is at least in part, if not in large part, a realization that as the clock is ticking and the question is still unanswered:  “Has my life any meaning?”

 

I think another over-reaction to this fear is the constant need to serve.  I remember vividly being exposed as a teenager to Horace Mann’s terrifying dictum: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”  So, Horace.  What exactly constitutes a victory?  How much of a “victory” makes my life worthwhile?  People who fall victim to this constant need to serve, as I have from time to time, risk losing the joy of life.  And that is no small loss.

 

Yet in terms of “sacred fear,” I think it is the question of meaning that each religion attempts to grapple with and answer.  And from that grappling, another question arises: can there be more than one “right” answer to the meaning of our lives?

 

The problem lies not with Jesus saying, “Here is an answer that will give your life meaning.”  Nor with Hillel, or the Buddha, or Mohammed.  The problem lies, I think, with the followers who codify it, who make rules and doctrines and dogmas.

 

As I ponder it, and in a blog there’s not a lot of space to do anything but begin the pondering, I believe there to be two essential components to sacred fear.

 

First, there is a deep belief that there can only be one “right” path.  And that belief has terrifying implications.  If I am counting on my religion to provide the answer to the question of meaning, the scariest question a human can deal with, and if there can only be one right answer to that question, then deep in the most primal part of me the fact that there are other religions with other answers is not only a challenge but frightening and a very real threat.  For if another religion is right, and there is only one right answer to meaning, then, literally, if another religion is “right,” my life has meant nothing. 

 

Yet there is a second component as well, a component not spoken of much, if at all.  And that is power.  What can be more intoxicatingly powerful than to be able to tell another: do “this” or your life will have no meaning?  And who, having had such power, would willingly give it up?  It has, therefore, never been in the “self-interest” of those in power to acknowledge that there might be other ways. 

 

And beyond that naked exercise of power, there is also the empowerment of those who have little else.  “I may not have much, and my life may suck, but I’m better than you because I know how to make God love me and you don’t!”

 

I am reminded of an experience I had in High School, where several of us were in a deep and personal discussion about prejudice.  “I have to believe that I’m better than them,” I was told by a fellow student.  “If I’m not better than someone, what do I have?”  I was quite young and had no answer, but the question, and the real pain behind it, still haunts. 

 

This is horrifically oversimplified.  But it does, I think, get to a primal reason for so much religious hatred, warfare and willingness to murder over the past three thousand years.  I believe that the underpinning of sacred fear is the fear of loss of meaning, particularly for those who have little, as well as loss of power, particularly for those with a lot of power to lose.  It is a double bind. 

 

Is there a way out?  I think so.  If there isn’t ONE answer to the question of meaning, if there is no one RIGHT answer, then we do have an opportunity to move away from fear.  It’s not a solution, it’s an opportunity.  It is the opportunity to accept a life of love and compassion, and to embrace the world: regardless of whether it is Jesus, Mohammed, Hillel, the Buddha or another spiritual leader who has inspired us.  Our separate lives can have equally valid meanings, “even” when derived from different spiritual paths.  Peace is possible if I will realize that the validity of your spiritual path need not cause me fear.

 

And so we are back to Interfaith. 

 

The door is unlocked.  But we must not only open that door, we must also walk through it. 

On Peace

 

As previewed last week, I had the privilege of participating in an interfaith service on September 11^th called “Interfaith Prayer for Peace in the World.”  The “Abrahamic” faiths were represented: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  It was a beautiful service.

 

Looking back, it interests me that I had concerns as the service began.  Where were the Buddhists, among many other faiths, I wondered.  How can this be interfaith when only the faiths that flow from Abraham are represented?  But the concern was misplaced.  Not that the other faiths should be excluded, but at this time, in this place, it made sense.

 

A theme that developed was, if the Abrahamic faiths can’t find common ground amongst themselves what hope is there for finding common ground with others?

 

And so the theme of peace.   I spoke, as planned, about swords into ploughshares, from my personal favorite piece of Scripture: Micah.  But I had decided to let the spirit take me from there and had only that prepared when I rose to speak.  Where I was taken was a not particularly profound, but nonetheless important observation.  Micah, some 700 years BCE talks of peace.  The Buddha, some 500 years BCE talks of how we can find peace.  Jesus speaks of it.  So does Mohammed.  If speaking about peace could have accomplished it we’d all be living in paradise.

 

And we aren’t.

 

I had lunch today with a dear friend whom I see far too infrequently.  As we spoke, we noted that it’s not just peace that’s missing from the equation.  How is it possible that two thousand years after Jesus there is still so much sickness, and hunger, and homelessness, and hate?  Or, if one prefers, how is it possible fifteen hundred years after Mohammed; or three thousand years after Moses; or twenty-five hundred years after the Buddha?  Or…or.

 

Speaking has not made it so.  BELIEVING has not made it so.  Praying has not made it so. 

 

You can’t get much more influential than Jesus or the Buddha, just by sheer numbers of followers.  Yet look at the mess the world is in.

 

These great, inspired, and, to my mind, divinely guided souls have not given us a world at peace.

 

We will never be given a world at peace.  We are going to have to take it.  We are going to have to get off our rear ends and take it.  No one, not even Jesus, or Mohammed, or Akiva or the Buddha or Lao-Tse or anyone else can give it to us.  Peace is not a gift to be given. 

 

Peace is hugely hard work, not a present to be unwrapped on some auspicious holy day.  Of course, that’s nothing new.  It’s just that perhaps we need to be reminded of it now and again.  Peace, like getting older, is not for the faint of heart.

A Full Week

 

The month of Ramadan began this week.  This Sunday, my Interfaith Church is looking at a specific part of Ramadan, the practice of fasting, and looking at it from many differing faith and spiritual traditions (Buddhist, Native American, Jewish., Christian and, of course, Islamic).  Not unreasonably, I’ve been tasked with speaking to the Jewish tradition.

 

It seems to be my Jewish week.  On September 11^th I’ll be participating in an Interfaith remembrance of what happened and reflecting on “Peace for the World” from a Jewish perspective.

 

I’m always a bit taken aback by being asked for “the” Jewish perspective.  Sometimes I wonder if my colleagues feel the same way.  I have a feeling they do.  Jamal is called upon for “the” Islamic perspective, Debra "the" Native American (First Peoples) perspective.  In a way it’s a reminder that we live in a Christian world.  Most are aware of the multitude of denominations in Christianity.  But one of our candidates for president can’t even keep two of the Islamic traditions (Sunni and Shi’a) straight.

 

In college I recall vividly being asked on more than one occasion what the Jewish point of view of the Vietnam War was.  I was also asked once to participate in a panel at college, to represent Judaism (it was to be a panel of six Christians of varying denominations and me).  I fear wasn’t nearly so polite then as I at least try to be now. 

 

And it strikes me that we allow textures and differences and shadings amongst those we know, but demand simplicity and stereotypes among those who are new or unknown.  But I digress.

 

What do I say about peace?  I’ve noticed of late an increasing hostility towards Jews in the U.S..  If this were a column about politics I might venture to say that this undercurrent may explain in part why more Jews are drifting away from their political past, and towards the perceived safety of the militant right.  But this is not a political column.

 

Do I talk about the fifteen hundred or so years that the majority of Jews were very Quaker-like in their view of fighting and war?  Or speak of how the murder of one third of the world’s population of Jews by Hitler and friends, as the world watched, radicalized much of modern Judaism and that Israel even today needs to be understood at least in part in that context?

 

I think not.  I want to talk about beating swords into plowshares (does anyone even know what a plowshare IS anymore??).  I want to speak of peace as the great unrealized hope and lead prayers for understanding.  It is much easier to give understanding to those we know (the people for whom we allow textures and differences and shadings).  But how do we make bridges?  How do we begin to give understanding to those we don’t know and therefore stereotype?

 

By the way, a plowshare is the part of the plow that breaks the ground and makes it possible to plant seeds for the future.